Secret Cities (New Mexico Hikes)

I spent a week recently in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, working in what was once a hidden city. Los Alamos is a town even smaller than my hometown, but with a few thousand more scientists! In fact, it would likely still be a small farm land if the US government hadn't set up its central nuclear research facility there! The statue of Mr Oppenheimer in the park downtown still overlooks a stream of researchers, machinists, technicians, etc. towards the bridge that takes them to the state-of-the-art facilities on the other side of the canyon. While I didn't actually get to see the research center, I did take advantage of the wonderful hiking that was so close to town! 

Moonrise at Sunset over a distant Santa Fe

I have always wanted to hike to a natural arch. Coming from a land of granite and other hard rock, the idea of standing under stone that isn't a basaltic overhang (like at Silver Falls) is kind of cool! The rock formations in Los Alamos are part of the Valles Caldera formation, the remnants of a volcano that went Mt Mazama 100,000 years ago. The rock varies from fairly solid basaltic lava flows to tufty fused volcanic ash. 

A polinator came down to the flower just as I decided to take a picture of it

 I had planned on having a sunset hike, or just before sunset, with the goal of getting both up and down the hill in less than an hour. The biggest worry was that I had a few hundred feet to climb, was starting at elevation (~7500'), and had an hour to cover the ~2 miles before the sun set. As the pictures attest, I was just a little low and a little late to truly catch the sun, but it was beautiful nevertheless!

Rocks beyond the arch

On the last day in Los Alamos, I went the other direction for my after work hike. This time, I went to Bandelier National Monument, where the remains of an old cliff dweller settlement were etched into the mesa. It was a little warm, but there was a storm blowing in from the west that may or may not have been heading towards me... so once again I had a bit of a clock on me!

The route itself went up the mesa, including a short scramble up a ladder, then east across its exposed top. There were wildflowers, scrubby brush, cactii, and scraps of pottery in what amounted to a sort of almost-abandoned, open air history museum. I followed a ribbon of trail worn into the soft, ashy rock. In some places it was a rut so deep my knees were hidden, in others there were individual steps worn in, foot - by - foot.

 At one point I descended a ladder and found myself in a distinctly human-shaped hole in the rock. It had square corners, little cubbies (shelves?) shaped into the rock, and a nearly perfectly circular hole in the ceiling that looked up to the sky. I wonder, if I had lived there, would I have worked on my space over cold winter nights in the mountains? It seems that with a harder rock in hand and a few minutes of dedication every day, the space could have been made even roomier... but maybe that would have made it harder to heat.

 On Friday I took the long way back to Albuquerque, driving up to the Caldera and down through the pueblo. There were multiple signs warning me that I was on a potentially dangerous Mountain Road, which made me wish that I had something other than a Corolla as a rental car... but then the sun rose over the rim of the caldera as I came across the  at the top of my drive, flooding the square miles of grassland with gold, and honestly I forgot about rest of the trip home for a while...